Egg Donation for Stem Cell Research in Britain

After the great experience with egg donation for stem cell research in Korea, who wouldn't want to make it easier for women to donate eggs for stem cell research. After all, there's no real risk that they will be coerced to do so. Right? Right? Well the British apparently think this is the moment to expand egg collection. HFEA is voting and appears certain now to pass a measure that not only allows for egg retrieval from those engaged in the research, it proposes a protocol for it:

The proposal includes safeguards to provide mandatory counseling for friends and family of scientists who want to donate and a ban on scientists donating their eggs to their own laboratories.

There's no question that egg donation should be allowed, and of course it would be just great if lots of women would volunteer out of the goodness of their heart to undertake donation of ova even with the risks (including death) involved in that procedure. But Korea tells us that we have to be very very careful about who is donating and why, and even Britain may not be able to resist the incredible pressure to get more eggs into the research program - particularly now that everyone has to work twice as hard to get Hwang's research "right."